Distributed render manager

# 1 23-11-2012 , 08:00 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Hi all,
Preface: Our program uses mac pros (and iMacs) while Maya, C4D, and AE are the render heavy apps. I am interested in working with the faculty to set up a distributed render system on some or all of our machines to help with student work.

Problem: I have a little knowledge of computer networks, some knowledge of Macs and Windows, and a fair bit of knowledge on rendering. The bottom line is I'm not sure where to start in looking for and setting up a distributed render manager. Okay, that's a lie, there are plenty of google searches I'm planning on doing anyway. But some help/advice is very welcome.

Goal: Ideally, a student would be able to submit jobs from Maya/mental ray, After Effects and perhaps C4D from computers on the local network, or remotely from Windows or Mac. There is a good server in place, so the renderer could write to a local drive and someone could pull the files off the server after getting a notification that the job was complete. The manager should be able to dynamically use CPUs from the macs that are not being used locally (i.e. no one is logged on). Or perhaps someone logged onto one of the computers could disable or scale back the render usage. Budget is of course an issue, but stability and flexibility are more important. I'm using eight 2xQuad core mac pros as the size of the "render farm" for quote purposes, but there are many more computers that could be included.

Question: Does anyone have experience with or knowledge of some render managers that might work for our purposes?

Thanks so much for input and advice.
Stuart

-stwert

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# 2 28-11-2012 , 04:38 PM

Head of 3d Admedia
Join Date: May 2007

Location: nairobi , ken-ya

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backburner 2008 it comes with autodesk and is really reliable. Have been using it for almost two years now on my render farm. I couldn't get the later versions of buckburner to work. There are digital tutors tutorials on how to get back burner to work.

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# 3 28-11-2012 , 04:57 PM

EduSciVis-er
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Location: Toronto

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Thanks Murambi... does backburner work with non-Autodesk software though?

-stwert

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# 4 28-11-2012 , 05:01 PM

Super Moderator
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backburner 2008 it comes with autodesk and is really reliable. Have been using it for almost two years now on my render farm. I couldn't get the later versions of buckburner to work. There are digital tutors tutorials on how to get back burner to work.

Originally Posted by murambi

Agreed. The later versions are such fickle bastards, sometimes they work sometimes you come back only to find some kind of error, it's infuriating! And that's if you can get it working initially. Now it's giving me an error because it's trying to run my heads up display scripts and I'm stuck going through everything with a fine tooth comb trying to understand why.

- Genny
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# 5 28-11-2012 , 05:36 PM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

Thanks Murambi... does backburner work with non-Autodesk software though?

Originally Posted by stwert

Yes, it can. You simply need to write a small script to tell it how to invoke the renderer. At my old studio, we had it managing Maya, Fusion, and After effects jobs through custom scripts. You do this through the cmdjob command line application. See "Submitting Jobs from a Command Line or Script" here: https://download.autodesk.com/us/syst...user_guide.pdf

There is also Dr. Queue, but it takes a bit more knowledge in order to set it up.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 28-11-2012 at 05:48 PM.

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# 6 28-11-2012 , 06:40 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Hmm... I'm totally fine to submit via command line, but perhaps that might be a hurdle for classmates that might prevent it from being used as much as possible. I wonder if there are more user friendly solutions out there. I was looking at Muster and RenderPal.

-stwert

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# 7 28-11-2012 , 07:45 PM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

If you want to pay for them, you can do that.

Why not just write a little wrapper in VB to submit it for them?

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 8 28-11-2012 , 11:37 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Well I don't personally want to pay for them, but honestly I don't have the time to be doing a lot of scripting and tech support. I'm just trying to work with my professors to get a system going. Ideally we'll be able to set up something simple, stable and reasonably flexible.